Open Slay
by Moedad
Summary: On Christmas Eve, Reacher steps into a street robbery in progress and runs afoul of the notorious street gang MS-13, who come gunning for him.


**Open Slay**

One of the problems with staying in a hotel that doesn't require a credit card deposit is the neighborhood. Doesn't matter if you dress it up for Christmas or not, it's typically a decrepit, older downtown area. Brick buildings, outdated architecture, neon signs; all bypassed by a newer, shinier business district a few blocks over. Concrete buildings, lots of glass. Wider sidewalks. New lighting. Better overall for the city, but hard on the businesses that couldn't afford to move out of the older area. It starts a downward spiral because the city's tax dollars are pouring into the new area as the older areas wither due to the lack of funding. Crime moves in. Drug dealing, prostitution, gangs, robbery. There's an old saw that says crime doesn't take a holiday. Even on the day before Christmas, like today. Even when a cold drizzle is keeping most people indoors.

So when I stepped around the corner, I knew in an instant what had happened and what was going to happen, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

An older guy with thick gray hair stood there on the sidewalk in a dark overcoat, arms at his side, each of his hands being weighed down by two bulging plastic grocery bags. Facing him was a short, younger guy. Shaved head, baggy clothes, dark complexion, holding a gun on the guy in the overcoat. They were six feet apart. I was twelve feet away. Too far.

Both of their heads swiveled toward me. The guy with the gun turned, pointing it at me, muzzle lifting. The guy in the overcoat let go of all four bags and lunged. The younger guy jerked the gun back in line with him and I heard a muffled gunshot as their bodies collided. Both guys went down on the dark, wet sidewalk, overcoat guy on top.

I reached them in three quick steps as they hit the concrete. The guy with the shaved head lay on his back, struggling to pull his gun hand out from between him and the guy in the overcoat. He looked scared, probably because he could tell by the expression on my face that he'd made the wrong choice of which guy to shoot. I smashed him in the forehead with the butt of my palm. The back of his head bounced hard off the cement with a noise like a dropped chunk of wood. He went limp.

I rolled the overcoat guy off of him, face up. His blue eyes were open, and he was gasping for breath. I yanked open the front of his coat, looking for an entry wound. I found it a few inches above his belt line, just to the right of his shirt buttons. Blood welled from it, the dark stain spreading on the blue fabric that matched the color of his eyes. He had a cell phone in a little black holster clipped to his belt. I pulled it out, flipped it open. It was on. I used my thumb and pushed 9-1-1.

Two rings, then the dispatcher picked up. A man's voice. "9-1-1, what is the nature of your emergency?"

"Got a guy here, gunshot wound, lower right quadrant. Southeast corner of…" I paused to check the street signs, "…Main and Spring."

"Help is on its way. What's your name, sir?"

"Doesn't matter. There's also a guy with a probable concussion…" The shaved head guy was stirring. I flipped the phone closed and set it down on the sidewalk, and pounded him again on the forehead with the bottom of my fist. Maybe a little harder than I'd hit him the first time. It seemed to work.

The gun was laying on the concrete between the two guys, so I pulled my fingers back into the sleeve of my jacket and used the cuff like a glove to pick it up. It was a piece-of-crap Lorcin nine millimeter semi-automatic. I was still kneeling there, holding the gun, when a lowered gray coupe with tinted windows-an Acura maybe, or a Honda-rolled by on the street, stereo thumping, slowing as it drew even with the three of us on the sidewalk. Another guy with a shaved head and a pock-marked face sat in the front passenger seat of the car, window down, looking at me through a ten foot gap between cars parked at the curb. His dark eyes flicked to the gun in my hand, made a quick scan up and down the street, then went back to the two men on the ground. He said something to the driver and the coupe accelerated a little, moved on down the street, the guy in the passenger side turning his head to glare at me until other parked cars blocked his view and mine. After a few moments I saw the car turn the corner at the end of the street. I set the Lorcin down beside me.

Overcoat guy's breathing was a little more ragged now, his eyes fixed on me. There was panic in them.

"Knocks the wind out of you, doesn't it?" I said.

"Is it bad?" he gasped. His breath was visible.

"You're going to be all right." Non-committal. I noticed a blotch of blood creeping out from under him. Taking hold of his belt and waistband with one hand, I lifted his hip to peer under him. There was a stained hole in his shirt and in the overcoat as well. "The round went through. You're lucky it was only a nine millimeter," I told him, more to help him stay conscious than anything. "Back in the army, we used to say a nine millimeter was only a forty-five set on 'stun'." Small talk. Easy banter, meant to offer reassurance and maybe delay him going into shock.

"They need these turkeys at the mission," he said. "They need time to thaw so they can be cooked tomorrow." He tried to elbow himself up off the sidewalk.

"Whoa, friend," I put my hand on his shoulder and held him down. "You just focus on laying here until the paramedics show up."

Another man appeared, knelt down next to us. "I'm a doctor," he said. "Let me help. What have we got?"

"GSW, one round, entered here, exited around on the side there," I indicated. "Not bleeding too terribly much yet. He hasn't brought up any blood either."

"Good," the doctor said. "Can you find something to put under his feet?"

I stripped the baggy jacket off of the shaved head younger guy, exposing elaborate tattoos sleeving both of his arms. He had on nothing but an undershirt-the kind some people call a "wife-beater"-under the jacket. I ripped a sleeve off of the jacket and folded it under the overcoat guy's head. Rolled up the rest of the jacket and stuffed it under his feet.

The doctor nodded his head at the young guy. "What happened to him?"

"He fell down," I said. The drizzle was making the kid's undershirt stick to his body. I didn't care.

"They…they need the turkeys at the mission," the wounded man said again. He was shivering now. In the distance I heard a siren.

"Do you know where the mission is?" I asked the doctor.

"Two blocks down Spring, left on First Street, right on Temple. Halfway down the block, east side of Temple."

"I'm going to run these turkeys over there. I'll come right back and give a statement to the police."

"What's your name," the doctor asked me.

"Reacher."

"Well, Reacher, if I were you, I wouldn't come back. See the tattoos on the kid's arms there? He's MS-13. 'Bout the nastiest gang around. Not the kind of people you want mad at you. If you had anything to do with him 'falling down', you're better off away from here. Drop off those turkeys, tell them what's going on, and just keep going. I can deal with things here." The siren was getting closer.

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Get going."

I gathered up the four bags. One turkey per bag, double bags actually, two double bags in each hand, the same way the guy with the overcoat had been carrying them. My hands were too big for the loops, so I just used my middle three fingers in each one. Started walking down Spring in the direction the doctor had indicated.

I was a little familiar with MS-13. Their members had begun to turn up in the Army brigs during the last year or two of my time there. Soldiers with MS ties were getting trained and taking the training back to the barrios to use against other gangs and law enforcement. MS stood for Mara Salvatrucha. It was a gang that originally started in Los Angeles in the eighties, at the time formed mainly of Salvadorans looking to protect themselves from the other Hispanic and African American gangs in the area. Now it was an international organization, still mostly Central American in ethnicity, and the tendency of its members toward extreme violence had earned them recruitment by the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel in their war with Los Zetas south of the border.

I got to First where I'd seen the gray coupe turn the corner. Didn't see the car. I crossed First and then crossed Spring on my way to Temple. The cold, damp street was deserted. There were a few cars parked along the curb, and an occasional car passed by on the street, tires hissing on the wet asphalt or clunking through potholes. The loops on the doubled plastic bags dug into the flesh of my fingers and I shifted the grip of each hand to ease the pressure. Each double bag of the four held a big frozen turkey. Each turkey weighed at least fifteen pounds. The thirty odd pounds I carried in each hand was nothing weight-wise, but the load turned the plastic loops into something closer to thick wire than flexible plastic. They were designed for lifting bags out of shopping carts and into the trunks of cars, not carrying frozen turkeys for blocks.

Halfway down the block toward Temple, I heard the hiss of tires coming up the street behind me. I glanced back and saw the gray coupe. The passenger side window was down. The black muzzle of a rifle protruded a few inches past the rubber molding. The driver realized they had been seen and the tuned exhaust howled as the car accelerated, the barrel of the rifle pushing further out of the open window.

I wheeled with the turkeys and ran back four steps to a parked SUV. Ducked down against the front wheel as bullets started slamming into the body and through the windows of the vehicle. Pebbles of broken safety glass exploded out across the sidewalk and skittered over the hood of the SUV, raining onto my shoulders and head and down the collar of my jacket. The muzzle blasts—distinctively AK-47-echoed up and down the street, bouncing crazily back and forth, amplified by the buildings lining the sidewalks. Rapid fire, but not automatic. One bullet per one squeeze of the trigger. Automatic weapons are not nearly as prevalent among street gangs as the media reports, but the rate of fire was enough to keep me pinned down, that was for damn sure.

The alarm in the SUV was shrieking. Rounds were tearing completely through the vehicle, shredding the metal of the passenger door just to my right, but the big engine block under the hood was stopping any bullets from penetrating far enough to strike me. Having the piece-of-crap Lorcin nine millimeter would've been a little comfort, but I'd left it next to the unconscious gang member two blocks back.

They couldn't drive forward and get a better angle on my position because there was another car-a Toyota Corolla-parked at the curb ten yards further down that prevented that tactic from being effective. They couldn't actually see me. To make sure I was dead, they'd have to send the shooter out with a handgun. At least I hoped they would.

The shooting stopped. I heard the passenger door of the coupe open. I took a deep breath and rolled to my left. Out from behind the hood of the SUV. Right in front of the guy climbing out of the car with a Glock in his hand. Twelve feet away.

I came out of the roll on my left knee with my right leg extended out to my right and a frozen turkey in my hands. The guy wasn't expecting me to pop out in front of him that way and his split-second of reaction time cost him.

I fired the turkey right at his face with both hands, hard, like I was passing a basketball all the way downcourt instead of twelve feet in front of me. He never had a chance. The turkey hit him like a frozen fifteen pound bowling ball. It was spectacular. Nearly took his head off. His feet flew into the air like a rug had been jerked out from under him.

I followed the turkey in and before the driver had a chance to realize what had happened, I stretched my right arm all the way into the car and grabbed him by the throat. Got a glimpse of another guy with a shaved head in the rear passenger seat, his eyes wide in shock. I yanked the driver out across the passenger seat and he hit the wet street on his chest next to the shooter. I lifted my right foot and drove the heel down right between his shoulder blades with all 250 pounds of me. Stomped every cubic inch of air out of his lungs. Something in his chest crunched from the impact.

I spun to the right and with the bottom of my fist, I hit the tiny rear passenger window of the coupe. The glass burst inward. Using both hands I reached in and grabbed the baggy flannel shirt of the third guy while he fumbled to draw a pistol out of his waistband and hauled him right up through the window. Lifted him over my head as he yelled, "NO-NO-NO-NO…." and slammed him down on his back next to the driver and the shooter, hard enough to bounce his head twice on the pavement. Hard enough that one of his shoes flew off and his pistol went clattering down the street.

I stood there shaking glass out of my jacket with my chest heaving from exertion, looking down at the three guys lying there limp in the street.

Estimated elapsed time from the AK running dry to the third guy hitting the street: eleven seconds.

I was pretty sure the first guy I'd hit with the turkey, the shooter, was still alive. I used the heel of my shoe again and ground the fingers on both of his tattooed hands into hamburger on the asphalt. The driver had a bloody froth leaking out of his mouth. I did the same thing to his hands.

The third guy was only a teenage kid. I left him alone. He'd have a hell of a concussion. If he lived.

The street was still deserted. Nobody came out to see about the shooting. Experience had taught them to wait. I picked up the shooter's Glock and went down the street to get the third guy's pistol, also a Glock, a G19, the nine with the four inch barrel. The shooter's full-size G17 had a round in the chamber. I dropped the mag and racked the slide to clear the round, then shoved the mag back into the grip. I picked up the round from the street and checked the other Glock. Full mag, but nothing in the chamber. Probably why the kid panicked and fumbled the draw from his waistband—he knew he'd have to chamber a round before he could use the weapon. I put both guns in the pockets of my jacket, one on each side. That was the reason I made sure they were unchambered. Glock makes a great gun, but with their safety trigger system, carrying one around unholstered in a pocket or waistband with a round chambered is just asking for a negligent discharge.

I retrieved the turkey I'd thrown and tried to wipe it clean on my jacket. It was still frozen solid and it looked pretty good actually. I bagged it up again and picked up the other three. One turkey per double bag. Two sets of double bags in each hand.

The mission was right where the doctor said it would be. There was a cross in the window outlined with a neon light. A sign behind the dirty glass said, "Turkey Dinner – Christmas Day." I hooked a finger in the door handle and pulled the door open. A buzzer sounded somewhere inside. I had to turn sideways to go through the doorway with the turkeys.

I found myself in a sort of lobby area with a stairway at one end. There was a counter just like the one in the lobby of the hotel I was staying in only a few blocks over. The building had probably been a hotel at one time, driven out of business just like so many of the others in the neighborhood. Behind the counter, a desk flanked by gray steel filing cabinets faced the back wall. To the left of the desk, a door opened into a hallway, and from down the hallway a man's voice called, "Just a minute, I'll help."

I stood there with the turkeys, dripping water on the battered wood parquet floor, and in much less than a minute, a guy with a long gray ponytail popped out of a doorway down the hall and came to the front. He was rail thin, almost as tall as me, all arms and legs, wearing a loose, unbuttoned sleeveless gray sweater over a red shirt. A pair of steel rim glasses gave his eyes an owlish look, and a big hooked nose didn't help any.

He stopped on the other side of the counter when he saw me.

"You're not Phillip," he said.

"Is Phillip a guy about your age? Blue shirt, overcoat?"

"Yes, he went to get the turkeys an hour ago."

"He had some trouble with one of your locals a couple streets over. He asked me to bring these on in."

"Trouble? What kind of trouble?"

"Guy tried to rob him and he got shot. He's probably on his way to the emergency room by now."

"Phillip's been _shot?_ Where? Is he okay?"

"Over on Main and Spring. There was a doctor with him when I left and the paramedics were almost there. Looked to me like he's going to make it, but you'd be better off checking with the hospital." I hefted the bags of turkeys a little. "Is there somewhere you want me to put these?"

The guy hustled around the end of the counter and gestured back down the hall. "Just take them back to the kitchen." He shoved open the entry door and ran up Temple toward First through drizzle that by now had almost become legitimate rain.

I navigated around the end of the counter with the turkeys and headed down the narrow hallway. I had to hold two bags of turkeys in front of me and two bags behind me. The hallway extended ten yards and opened into what seemed to be a dining area. I saw long tables and folding chairs lined up on a concrete floor.

Midway down the hall there were two open doors, each across from the other. Coming from the door on the right, I heard what sounded like things sliding and being stacked. The smell of baking bread reminded me I hadn't eaten yet today. I stepped into the doorway. There were industrial looking stainless steel appliances around the perimeter of the room—stoves, sinks, refrigerator/freezer combinations, countertops. In the center of the room stood a big island with a wooden countertop and a rack of utensils above it. The countertop of the island was piled with cans and boxes and bags of beans, rice, flour, and sugar.

A short, slender woman dressed in jeans and a hooded black sweatshirt stood at the island with her back to me. Her long dark hair had some wave to it, like she'd worn it in a braid the night before. She was sorting through the supplies on the countertop and checking them off on some kind of a list on a clipboard.

I shook the bags a little to rustle the plastic. The woman turned. Her eyes flared wide for a moment when she saw me looming in the door, but then she noticed the bags with the turkeys and she relaxed some. She was Hispanic, with smooth brown skin and fantastic long-lashed eyes. Eyes that still held a little wariness.

"You're not Phillip," she said with a slight accent.

"I get that a lot," I said. She smiled. She had a great smile. It was so good I think the turkeys started to thaw out just being in front of it.

"Go ahead and bring the turkeys over here." She led the way to a stainless steel counter. Where's Phillip?" she asked as she took the bags from me one at a time and put them on the counter. I noticed she didn't have any kind of wedding band on her ring finger.

"He got robbed after he picked up these turkeys." She stopped moving, her eyes focused on my own, both of us holding the last bag together, but she said nothing. Her small brown hands were warm against mine. "I walked into it as it was happening and almost got shot for it. Phillip stopped the guy, but ended up taking a bullet himself. I think he'll be okay though. He was very concerned that these turkeys get here so they could thaw in time for the dinner tomorrow." I was impressed that she let me get all that out without interrupting me. I let her take the bag and she thumped it onto the counter with the others.

She shook her head. "That sounds like Phillip," she said. She turned back to face me. "What's your name?"

"Reacher."

"Reacher. Okay, Reacher, I'm Isabel. If Phillip is in the hospital, we're shorthanded. We're going to need some help." She stepped close, very close, her head tilted back to look up at me with those eyes. "Do you have plans for Christmas?"

I said nothing. But I sure as hell smiled.

THE END

8


End file.
